


Post-

by Match (pachipachi)



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith
Genre: Gen, Introspection, Post-Movie(s), Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-02
Updated: 2016-01-02
Packaged: 2018-05-11 01:35:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,360
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5608771
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pachipachi/pseuds/Match
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>How Obi-Wan became old Ben Kenobi.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Post-

**Author's Note:**

> The bulk of this was written before Episode III was released and thus doesn't tally precisely with that film's final scenes. I've decided I don't care. There's some suggestion of past Q/O if you squint. I never thought I'd come to like that pairing, but if anyone wants to tell me a story about what happened to the two of them on that desert planet I'd read the hell out of it.

This is how it will end.

You will make planetfall at 1740 ship's time, 0400 local, the infant with you. This far out, membership in the Galactic Republic amounts to having at least one spaceport tech literate enough to post the Customs & Immigration signage right way up. Neither passengers nor crew will be carrying any papers they're willing to present. Your own will be long gone. Though it would have pleased you to send your identity cards through an airlock, you will have settled for wrapping anything that bears your name in a dirty diaper and chucking it into the ship's incinerator. As funerals go, it's less than beautiful but it will do.

At this hour, the town will move at cross-currents. The few girls and boys still hustling will be on edge, scowling at shambling drunks ejected from last-call bars and techs hurrying to daybreak shift at the spaceport or desalination plant. Street vendors' glowglobes will burn sickly yellow against the gray wash of worklight. Fried cactus strips, milky coffee, unidentifiable meat on skewers, the first batch almost ready for the day's first customers. Are you hungry? You will be hungry but you will not stop. The infant will stir at your breast, feet testing the mesh of his carrying sling, and you will fear to wake him. Mos Eisley won't have changed a bit.

The transport will be scheduled to board at first sunrise. "Coulda been here sooner," the driver will complain, "but my sand-for-brains brother-in-law lost the keys to the damn car barn." In fact his eagerness to explain himself to the single worried, uncomprehending offoworlder will delay your departure nearly to second sunrise. The locals will ignore him.

Your fingertips will go numb and white with pre-dawn cold, one by one: left middle, right index, ring. Across the car, a flicker of latent Force-talent. You will launch a shred of awareness towards it by reflex, before remembering who and where you are. Is it a youngling? Someone too old to begin the training? It will make no difference. The grainy hiss of a security recording will fill your mind, and you will not look up. You are not your master, stubborn enough to train a padawan in secret; nor are you Master Yoda, strong enough in the Force to defy the assassins Palpatine would surely send. All your life, you realize, you have been in training to disappear. You will find the idea comforting. When the new world comes down, you will be prepared at least for that part of it.

The infant will nestle against your body: stubbornly warm, stubbornly alive. Your hand will smooth over his skull, slicking down the fine hair. You will extend your awareness again, deliberately, setting an anchor at the point where the infant's heart lays closest to your own. Each fellow-traveler glows yellow-green in your mind's eye, the Force-talent faceless and tinged with amber. Rose-and-tawn of furred creatures: perhaps loping alongside the transport, perhaps trekking farther outland on sight of it. Gray-rose of scaled creatures, fewer and smaller. Though you know the transport couldn't match the speed of the cheapest Coruscant jitney, you will feel yourself moving too quickly to catch more than the barest wash of psychic color. What fragments of the hidden landscape you're able to read will be hardly more than you might have seen from your grimy window with eyes alone.

You will debark at Anchorhead and wait in the meager shade of its staging area. It will be well into the hottest part of the day before you meet a farmer willing to hitch you a ride overland. You will have spoken no more than ten words of Standard since landfall, fewer in other languages. He will not ask about the infant and you will make no comment. As you climb into his speeder, the infant will squirm and wake. You will pull the edge of your cloak around him to protect his face from blowing sand. Already you will have forgotten the dazing heat of a double sun. Standard is not your first language. You will try to recall your cradle tongue, but only the simplest words will come to mind. _Farewell. Good morning. Have you had tea yet?_ as if you were a phrasebook. A children's song about hoeing turnips, lilting and repetitive. You will curl inward and hum its chorus to the infant to quiet him. There will be a packet of milk-formula in your knapsack, heated to temperature by the suns and your body, but you won't be able to reach it from where you sit.

You will part ways with the farmer at the last outstation before open country. He will refuse your offer of credits for fuel, but will accept a piece of fresh fruit from your knapsack. "Hydroponics," you will explain. "The freighter had a hydroponics tube." He will sniff the fruit once, again, before tucking it away carefully. The speeder will pitch and resettle as you climb out. The farmer will readjust his sand goggles, check the fastenings on his pockets, and wait until you clear his wake before gunning the motor. He will not look back.

You will find Owen waiting by the cistern. He won't say how long he's been there, nor will he mention inviting you back to his farm. He will greet you as if it isn't the first time you've spoken. "Homestead's not far," he will say. "A hike, but an easy one. Beru's already there. I left the speeder with her." He will hand you a pair of sand-grips, worn but serviceable. You will have to give over the infant so you can kneel and strap them to your boots. Though carrying him is hardly comfortable (the sweaty patch where he lays against your body, each point where the straps of the sling dig in) losing the weight of him will bring you a dizzy flash of terror. When you stand, finally, and nod for Owen to hand you the infant, it will feel like catching him up out of freefall.

Outside, your body will find the rhythm of walking on sand easily. There was another desert planet: you spent a Coruscant year there, sometimes with your master and sometimes not. It lay in close orbit to a cooling star; against the calendar you kept, its seasons renewed 3.5 times. The beginning of each rainy season felt like living forever.

The planet's primary advanced culture was telepathic, mute. You never learned its true name.

You will hear Beru before you see her. She will round the corner of the house heaving a fuel cannister before her, her body hunched and bowlegged with effort. Owen will take the last few meters as quickly as he is able, and lift the cannister suddenly up and away from her body. "It's not so heavy," she will protest, "only half-full," but she will let him take it. She will not meet your eyes. Later she will take the infant from you too quickly, as if she isalready jealous of his affections. His fretful quiet eyes, hardly blinking, will peep at you from over her left shoulder. She will have brought her own carrying sling. Not as new as the one you have, but a better make, its seams reinforced by hand. You will wonder how long they have waited.

The three of you will work through the afternoon, pausing only once for breadrolls and cold sweet tea. They will set off shortly after first sunset, leaving several days' supplies, a pallet and chest, a generator, an improvised drip-catch basin, and a promise to return the next day. Outside, in the hush between first and second sunset, you will pace through beginners' forms in sequence, smoothing your mind to the muzzy curve of the horizon. Your master's spirit will hover at the edge of your awareness like a word without sound, a thought without words. Soon you will be strong enough to answer.

This is how it will end. Hours later, you will wake in the night and _know_ , finally, that all of you are hurtling towards a future you don't want to imagine.


End file.
